Freed Taliban told to find jobs

AFGHANISTAN'S new leader has released 320 Taliban footsoldiers from jail in a gesture of reconciliation, telling them to "go home and find jobs".

The soldiers, all Afghans, were paraded at a ceremony outside the presidential palace in Kabul where Hamid Karzai warned them not to take up arms again.

Mr Karzai said: "We decided some time back we would begin to release everybody, those who did not have a bad record or links with terrorists.

"These are Afghans. They should go back to their homes and begin their lives. They were innocent."

Each of the prisoners was given £12 by the government and £8 by the Red Cross for their journey home to the provinces. At the ceremony the foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah remarked that this was more than his monthly salary.

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Mr Karzai described the men as conscripts. Many seemed to have been press-ganged by the Taliban, but others queueing for their money at the Red Cross office in the capital yesterday were unrepentant about their role with the fundamentalist militia, which ruled for five years until it collapsed in November under American bombardment.

Rohullah, a 19-year-old from the south, the movement's heartland, said: "I believed in the jihad [holy war]. I liked the fighting and the praying. It makes no difference to me if I die serving Allah, or live."

He said if the Taliban regrouped or a similar Islamic militia emerged, he would not hesitate to join up.

Abdul Khaliq, from the southern province of Zabul, described his three months in prison as "hell". Prisoners slept in overcrowded, unlit rooms, and ate only bread three times a day. Otherwise they were well treated, he said.

"We have peace now, which is good, but if the new government does not bring Islam to Afghanistan, the people will rise up. We just want Islam, Islam, Islam in Afghanistan," he added. The Taliban built up an army of 40,000-45,000 through its appeal to Islamic purity.

If the new government does not assert itself throughout the country, bring warlords to heel and introduce a measure of economic improvement, the conditions that produced the Taliban will remain.

The Red Cross has registered 5,000 Taliban and al-Qa'eda prisoners at 40 locations throughout the country who might be willing servants of a resurgent movement.

In three months only three senior Taliban figures have been arrested: the former ambassador to Pakistan, the deputy foreign minister and the former foreign minister Mullah Abdul Wakil Muttawakil, who handed himself in on Friday to US forces.

As a close friend of the movement's chief Mullah Omar, the Americans are hopeful that he will provide information on the mysterious leader's whereabouts. Mr Abdullah, the interim foreign minister, called for Mullah Muttawakil to be put on trial in Afghanistan or America.

He said: "Taliban leaders have committed crimes against humanity. They created misery for our people. The world has suffered because of what they did."